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Cognitively Engineering a Virtual Collaboration Environment for Crisis Response

Abstract

Crisis response situations require collaboration across many different organizations with different backgrounds, training, procedures, and goals. The Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005 emphasized the importance of effective communication and collaboration. In the former, the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team (MPAT) supported brokering of requests for assistance with offers of help from rapidly deployed military and humanitarian assistance facilities. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard Soldiers and active component Army Soldiers assisted other state, federal, and non-government organizations with varying degrees of efficiency and expediency. Compounding the challenges associated with collaboration during crisis situations is the distributed nature of the supporting organizations and the lack of a designated leader across these military, government, nongovernment organizations. The Army Research Laboratory is collaborating with the University of Edinburgh, University o

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